Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Well, so much for posting all the time! So much has happened since March, so lets play catch up, the summarized version.

We left Las Vegas May 16th and arrived at the farm in Kentucky May 19th around midnight. We spent the next week in a hotel because super tiny rural farming areas take their time turning on power & water. The phone & internet took almost 3 weeks after the 4 days of waiting on power/water.

We've been working around the clock to get things in order, fixed up & cleaned up. The main house needed plumbing repairs in the bathroom and kitchen as well as new insulation on the pipes under the house.

We had part of the hill in front of the barn dozed/flattened and put a trailer on it.

We had the upper pond drained, mucked out & widened and the dam rebuilt. Its fed by a spring, so we haven't had to wait on rain.

We've fenced off the hills behind the barn for the goats, which we now have 11 of. The original 2 we came out with are doing so much better than they ever did in Vegas!

We bought a horse, his name is Fury, but everyone calls him Buck. Still trying to learn the story behind that.

The neighbor on the hill behind us plowed a plot for a garden. We got that tilled and broke the sod chunks out best we could and got to planting. We've gotten tons of tomatoes, potatoes, beets, zucchini, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, honey dew and the pumpkins are growing like crazy! A couple of weeks ago we planted lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, basil and cabbages.

We bought chickens, ducks, turkeys, guineas and rabbits. We've built hutches and cages. Then we built 8ft x 8ft chicken wire enclosed raised cage/rooms for the turkeys, they grew fast!

For our anniversary, July 1st, we bought 2 great pyrenees puppies, both boys. Their names are Sledge (right) & Hammer (left). Cute huh! We've been working with them in the chicken/goat/horse area. They are almost ready to start staying in the yard with all of them.

We bought 5 hogs. Have them put up and have been feeding them corn, getting them ready for butcher in October/November.

And lastly, we bought 2 jersey milk cows, one in her 2nd phase of pregnancy, both in milk and healthy.

We've gone fishing a few times, lots of hunting too! The laws for hunting on your land are interesting.

We started our 2nd year of homeschooling August 10th. We've studied the Civil War, canning/preserving, gardening, animal husbandry, breeding rabbits, studying the animal tracks that we find behind the house in the morning, identifying the plants and trees. We've made jelly out of Queen Anne's Lace, which everyone around here calls chigger weed. We've gone walnut & acorn picking, then did rubbings of the leaves. Also lots on dinosaurs, because those are a huge favorite here! Oh! and the caterpillars, they absolutely fascinate Tyler. They spin these huge web looking cocoons that hang in the trees.

Oh! And we had a baby deer adopt us, so we've been bottle feeding her since June.

I'm promising that we'll be updating frequently! There is so much to share and in detail! We're working hard on becoming self-sufficient and want to share our journey as so many others have that inspired and helped us along the way!